Wednesday, August 26, 2009

I don't need a keeper, thank you. Now back off!

In 2004.... John Kerry insisted that his faith was "why I fight against poverty. That's why I fight to clean up the environment and protect this Earth. That's why I fight for equality and justice. All of those things come out of that fundamental teaching and belief of faith."

But he also said that, when it came to abortion, "What is an article of faith for me is not something that I can legislate on somebody who doesn't share that article of faith."

The statements cannot be reconciled. By Kerry's own admission, he seeks to legislate his articles of faith on people on nearly every issue under the sun — except abortion.

Suddenly, on that issue alone, he is an adamantine secularist.

Speaking during the campaign at an evangelical church in South Carolina, he (Obama) said, "I am confident that we can create a kingdom right here on Earth."

He supported Bush's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and kept the agency when he took over, albeit with a slight name change... His (obama) social agenda....was deeply informed by the injunction that we "are our brother's keeper, our sister's keeper."

Leaving aside the fact that the Bible nowhere says we should be our brother's keeper (the phrase appears once — when Cain is trying to dodge a murder rap from G-d) or my own view that the government should never see itself as a keeper of anyone but incarcerated criminals (my dictionary says keepers are prison guards and zoo wardens), I think Obama's approach is a welcome change of pace.

Politics has always been a contest of values, and religion remains the chief source of those values. Our political discourse has long been cheapened by the canard that only conservatives try to use the state to impose a religiously informed moral vision, while liberals are guided by science, reason and logic as well as some secular conception of decency and compassion. No party has a monopoly on such resources, and it's about time we all recognized that.

I'm Jill. I'm a librarian and milliner now living in Salt Lake City with my husband of 37 years and my three shelter adopted cats. I'm 60, was born and expected I would spent my whole life in San Diego, save for two years in Corvallis Oregon in college.
Then beginning in 1997, right after our youngest graduated from high school my husband and I began "empty nesting" on the move. We lived one year in Almenden CA (San Jose area), two years in Dallas TX and eight years on Houston TX before moving Salt Lake City in the fall of 2008.
I love it here, but counting on Heaven being my ultimate hometown! I do hope we will one day be neighbors there?
I have two adult children; a daughter in San Diego and a son (and daughter-in-law) who also live in Salt Lake City; two beloved grandsons, and parents who were born and still live in San Diego, and who read my blog every day.